


Five Minutes in Mexico

by Herself_nyc



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herself_nyc/pseuds/Herself_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith and Xander, on the road.</p><p>A teensy post-series-finale ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Minutes in Mexico

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a post-series fic I started the summer after BtVS ended. It never got off the ground, but this little scene seemed worth preserving here.

Xander still couldn't quite believe this was happening, even though it was going on for months now. At first he'd told himself it was a death-averted thing, an adrenaline thing, a rebound thing, a guilt thing, a grief thing. It would be over any second, much as it was the first time she'd touched him. He'd find himself shoved, half-naked, out a door.

Or crushed, half-dead, beneath her--

But . . . this time . . . not.

She was fiddling with the radio. "Nothin' but Mexican music, goddamnit."

"We _are_ in Mexico, my sweet little fugitive-from-justice."

"Gotta scam some CDs."

"I don't think our expense account runs to--"

"That's why I said 'scam.' If I meant 'buy,' I'd've said--"

"Shut it off and I'll sing to you instead."

He couldn't catch what kind of look she threw him at that, because Faith was in the driver's seat, and that was his blind side.

But, a moment later, she tapped off the radio. And in another moment, while the car filled up, through the open windows, with the sound of too much speed on a bad road, she said, "What'll you sing?"

Her voice was low, not too sultry. Interested. He couldn't in that moment think of a single song, but he was caught up in her attention. Faith never used to have much of an attention-span, but that was different now.

Sometimes her brows would knit and she'd say, "Is this good?" in the same tone of voice as someone respectfully wanting to know if the stew needed more salt. And he'd tell her that it was--because it was--and she'd look relieved. "You'd say, wouldn't you, if it wasn't?"

"Sweetheart, it's all good." 

She blushed when he called her sweetheart. Faith. Blushing.

In the beginning--when this was still just a business trip--he'd worried about the Robin Wood situation. They'd all thought they were an item, a big important item, that she'd go off with him when the time came to take up the work of restarting the Council. But when it was decided that Faith would go south, stay out of the country a while, and look for new slayers, she'd asked him to be her trip-buddy, and Wood was out of the picture. Later he'd asked her about it. 

"Got the feeling there wasn't anything he really needed me for. It wouldn't of lasted. I'm so sick of that shit."

He'd felt a little stunned, hearing her say that. _So, what . . . I need you? Because I'm one-eyed and Anya-less?_ He was opening his mouth to say it when he remembered: this, between them, was just work. It was not about boys and girls. Why was he automatically--apparently instinctually--turning it into a boy-girl thing? This was a We Are The New Watchers Council Thing. Pretty much everybody was paired up into twos--those who were going, as Giles called it, Into the Field, anyway. 

Then he couldn't believe he'd even been _thinking_ in a boy-girl way about Faith, who'd nearly killed him once, when he'd gone to her in friendship. 

And who was _so_ out of his league.

"Whatcha gonna sing me, Xan?" she crooned, pulling him back from his reverie.

"Name that tune."

"Lessee . . . how about happy birthday."

"Happy--hey. Is it your birthday?"

"Yesterday. I just remembered."

"You just _remembered_? Stop the car."

She pulled over. They were on some backroad in a place that was all backroads, a place where as soon as you stopped, the silence was total, if the sound of crickets could be counted as silence. Xander thought it could. 

The sound of her breathing, when their mouths were very close together, and he could feel her pulse race as he held her, was another part of that delicious silence. He kissed her for a long time, and she squirmed, moving onto his lap, hands gripping his shoulders and his hair and his arms, but she let him just kiss, that was part of this whole new patience tip she was on with him.

"Slayer birthdays are way special," he murmured. "Every one's a triumph."


End file.
